that it will
STOP RAINING!
The exact opposite has occurred, on an almost daily basis, so I'm now practicing reverse weather psychology: every day I look forward to a heavy thunderstorm and imagine all the fossils being washed out of the river banks and deposited on the soft sands of the river bottom, waiting for me to come along and gather them up.
This river gage may look encouraging,
until you realize that the river is still about 8 FEET too high.
This summer, the credo appears to be,
"When you can't go Peace, go Apollo"
I'd been wanting to revisit the spoil islands off Apollo beach since I paddled over there for the first and only time 3 years ago. Back then, I found part of a beaver tooth and various bone fragments; enough to keep my interest intact. This would also be a good opportunity to do a test run with the new kayak rack and do some provisioning for the slowly approaching Peace River season.
My first season digging in the Peace River was marred by stabbing muscle cramps in my hamstrings on the 2 hour drive home every week. This inexpensive electrolyte mix solved the problem.
But, of course, there is always another problem waiting to rear its annoying head.
Kayak wheels are needed to get from the parking lot to the actual Apollo beach and my wheels SUCK!
Ok, they were free, but sometimes "free" isn't enough to counterbalance "suck" so I made a mental note to secure a new yak trolley before attempting this venture again.
And the weather, too?!
A cold front had rolled through overnight and the morning was cold (by Florida standards, you know, 65ºF) and windy.
The placid nature of this photo belies the gravity of the choppy, haystacking waves I kayaked through. I kept reassuring myself, "This is nothing. It's SOOO much worse on The Deadliest Catch."
Still...SKETCHY.
For anyone attempting this little jaunt, choose a calm day, wear sturdy dive boots, and try to cross at mid-tide as the channel side of the spoil islands is lined with a series of cement beams that sport patches of sharp barnacles: much easier to cross when submerged by at least a few inches of water, although you can wriggle through if the tide heads out while you're fossil hunting.
The shoreline is a daunting jumble of big broken clam shells and rocks.
Is it worth all the trouble?
When in desperate need of a fossil fix, yes!
I climbed out of my kayak and almost stepped on this big chunk of mammoth tooth.
Another half hour of surface hunting yielded 2 horse teeth, one with particularly nice color and translucency in the enamel.
I only visited one little island and most of the rocky part of the shoreline was covered
either by water or mangroves,
but it calmed my hankering to hunt and gather.
